Poetry Criticism: What Is It For? (March 15th, 2000, New York City) — moderated by poet Susan Wheeler, the panel engaged critics Stephen Burt, Marjorie Perloff, Michael Scharf and Helen Vendler in a provocative discussion of poetry criticism today. Burt’s and Scharf’s papers were published in Jacket 11; the others are published here, with some audience discussion.

Paul Quinn on Language poetry — " . . .puns and jokes . . . appropriate for a poet who . . . boasts of working under the influence of the three Marxes — Chico, Groucho and Karl — and the four Williamses — Raymond, William Carlos, Tennessee and Esther."

Nate Dorward on three books about Roy Fisher — Interviews through Time and Selected Prose, Roy Fisher. News for the Ear: A Homage to Roy Fisher. Ed. Peter Robinson and Robert Sheppard, and The Thing about Roy Fisher: Critical Studies Ed. John Kerrigan and Peter Robinson.

Cassandra Pybus — The CIA as Culture Vultures — on the funding of Quadrant magazine — "Josselson was not happy with the make-up of the Australian committee since the CIA strategy was to court intellectuals of the non-communist left, not fund a bunch of zealous anti-communists. . . . Krygier chose James McAuley as editor. He was not an obvious choice for editor of a literary journal, since he was viewed by many in the literary world as a mediocre poet and a Catholic fanatic. This chorus of concern did not bother Krygier. He had no interest in poetry or religion: it was McAuley’s passionate anti-communism which really impressed him."

Robert Creeley on Charles Olson (his Preface to Charles Olson: The Allegory of a Poet’s Life, by Tom Clark)

John Miles — Lost Angry Penguins: D.B. Kerr, P.G. Pfeiffer and the real founding of the Angry Penguins

You think computers ruined poetry — wait till you see what artistic and social ruin the telephone caused:

‘After a day of work, the artists wanted to get away from their studios, and get away from what they were creating. They all met in the cafés to argue about this and that, to discuss their work, politics and philosophy.... We went to the bar of La Coupole. Bob, the barman, was a terrible nice chap... As there was no telephone in those days everybody used him to leave messages. At the Dôme we also had a little place behind the door for messages. The telephone was the death of Montparnasse.
’

— Jaqueline Goddard, January 1995.

Jacqueline Goddard (b.1911) an icon of bohemian femininity, was part of the Paris artistic scene between the wars, and was photographed by Man Ray in Paris in 1930. The telephone lady above is not Ms Goddard.

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